I have been observing this group’s stories and comments for a little while now.  This is my first post for your consideration.  Sorry for the Tolstoy-ish length, but I wrote what I needed to get down.

My wife and I have been together for just shy of 25 years.  Married for 22.  Kids now 14 and 19, the latter now in college.  We are both adult children of alcoholics and I, myself, have been sober for 20 years.

I never got to see it in person, but my father in law was capable of becoming a mean drunk and a violent abuser.  I have always theorized that his drinking was  a form self-medication in response to his own anxiety and depression.  My own dad got sober when I was 14 after he attempted an overdose suicide, an attempt that I discovered and intervened in.  In typical alcoholic family form, we just moved on and pretended that everything was fine.  Both of our fathers are long ago deceased.  We both look at our respective dads and appreciate that they were each doing the best they could, but deeply unhappy men with powerful demons, who could also be gentle and wise and nurturing and loving. It's complicated.

My life – our life – is quite enviable.  Our kids are healthy and reasonably well adjusted.  We are both educated, have good professional lives, work well in the team aspects of life and family, and even on our worst days we are far better than our alcoholic & enabling co-dependent parents were when things were chaotic.  Yet we are both lonely and unhappy – together.

The last time we had sexual intercourse was over 4 years ago.  We have fooled around a handful of times since, but our marriage has been virtually sexless for a long time.  Nothing even remotely sexual for well over 6 months.  There are days when I count my (many) blessings and think that sex really shouldn’t be that much of a big deal.  There are lots of other days when I feel like I am the most inadequate, unattractive, and flat-out unlovable person on the face of the earth.  Despite all evidence to the contrary I must be a failure as a husband.  I feel ashamed that I want to be touched and loved.      

My inner emotional life is like the roulette wheel at a casino. I can land on any one of the stages of grieving at any given time:  acceptance that we are both highly imperfect people with a lot of baggage and we are doing the best we can; bargaining that we have been through a lot and it might get better;  anger that I am stuck and can’t seem to do anything to make it better; denial that our relationship is as incomplete as it feels; and depression because I am (it would seem) so lonely and unlovable.

At my urging, we tried couples counseling in the last year.  After a few months it was a complete bust.  There was no sincere interest on her part to really engage the process – mostly just anxiety and tentative defensiveness.  It had the potential to take us out of our comfort zone and the fear of that was more powerful than the acknowledgement that our relationship had some really deep fundamental problems.

When I drank – which I did with great enthusiasm as a young adult – it relieved me of my self-doubt and was a dependable and very liberating experience.  I am a textbook alcoholic.  Went from social drinking to solo drinking to full-on dependency and self-loathing.  Quit drinking once and have been on the wagon since that day.  She met, and dated, me in my heavy drinking days and our 1st two years of marriage were very alcohol infused.

I am depressed but taking antidepressants that help pull the bottom up to the point where I can work with it. My life is stressful and complicated.  I started a small professional business 12 years ago.  It has grown and matured and achieved some notoriety for our successes. I deal with employees, clients, consultants, and contractors and have figurative brush fires erupt on a regular basis.  Aside from attempting to balance work and family as I could, I have been “all in” on the firm’s survival and success…at the expense of friendships and hobbies and self-care.  I worked with a therapist for a few years and that helped me sort through some of my childhood experiences.  In the last year I have “retired out” out of several public service commitments and have started to, at age 51, exercise regularly and practice a halfway healthy diet.  Weight has never been an issue for me, but fitness was not part of my life for 20+ years. I can now run a respectable 5K and love how that feels. I hate that my successes and positive changes are all solo efforts.  I’ve asked my wife to take walks with me and join in other healthy things and the response is always, “I am too tired” or “you go ahead, that is your thing not mine.”     

My wife has anxiety and depression that are untreated and appear to be getting worse with age and life’s stresses.  She was on antidepressants for a while but has been off of them for a good year.  The depressed self-sabotage behaviors are many: exhausting 99% of the emotional energy navigating their professional world then, once home, tuning out and playing candy crush for hours on end.  In action, the anxiety and self-doubt manifest in her being consumed with mentally playing out every worst-case scenario at every moment of the day, with special emphasis on how others view her, which in-turn results in her investing virtually all her energy into managing those perceptions and suppressing the constant fear of failure and others’ disappointment.  Outside of work, there is no gas left in the tank to get out and exercise or garden, do things as a family, or do things as a couple. She has neither the energy nor the desire for sex.  It is near the tail end of the line of priorities that don’t get acted on.

I stumbled on evidence of an emotional affair 8 years ago.  Don’t think it became a physical affair, but nevertheless shredded my heart.  My mother in law got very sick with multiple cardiac issues shortly after that and became the focus of all energy.  She survived (barely) and it was a good excuse for everyone to reset priorities and allow the whole family to put things in perspective.  Her mom is still very much alive and continues to heal and has a good quality of life now.      

Our relationship was very playful, carefree, and full of fun and plenty of sex when we were dating, living together and early in our married life.  With a child, then a second, the time and energy for good sex was harder to come by but we were still quite connected. Over the last 7 years the emotional connection and the physical intimacy has evaporated.

Like many of you, there are no easy, “all you have to do is ______” answers.  It’s complicated.  I want to be totally in love, and have shared passion, and be emotionally & physically connected on a regular basis.  I want her to want me. 

There are times when I think I am just an unhappy person and this is as good as it gets, and I should just be satisfied with my lot in life.  There are other times when I think I have been stuck in a situation that only she can take the first crucial steps to address, but I have been waiting for things to start getting better for years.  They probably aren’t going to head that direction without being forced.  So many reasons to stay and hope for this to get better and so many reasons to put myself first and leave the relationship.  I just don’t know which fork in the road to take.